Bella ma pericolosa

This whimsical movie is set in a fictitious town in Arkansas called Progress. Places such as Little Rock and Pine Bluff are mentioned. Then in one part one of the locals talks about the location being a few miles northwest of Little Rock which would place it somewhere around Mayflower or Conway, Arkansas. The countryside depicted in the movie looks a whole lot like southern California. Possibly one reason the name Progress was chosen was not only to cater to the stereotype at the time of Arkansas as a backward hillbilly state but also because the "Natural State's" slogan in those days was "Land of Opportunity." Being a native Arkansawer (Arkansan), I was pleased to see a fellow Arkansan, Arthur Hunnicutt, and someone from Missouri, Edgar Buchanan, in the cast. Hunnicutt is buried in Greenwood, Arkansas, near Fort Smith. He was a wonderful character actor and added authenticity to the film.

"She Couldn't Say No" teamed Jean Simmons and Robert Mitchum once more and the pairing works fairly well, not as good as Robert Mitchum and Jane Greer but better than some of the other female partners assigned him over the years. Both Simmons and Mitchum were top of the line Thespians and much under appreciated, even today. The title is weak and keeps many from watching a somewhat clever and entertaining flick.

I agree with one of the IMDb reviewers that not enough time is spent by director Lloyd Bacon developing the theme of media sensationalism once the press gets word that an anonymous donor has given the 200 residents of Progress money (the exact amount is not revealed but it was obviously a large sum). There's an old W.C. Fields movie "If I Had A Million" and an early TV series "The Millionaire" that dealt with how a million dollars given to strangers would change their lives and rather than making their dreams come true would usually alter their dreams in negative ways. So there was much potential in the basic theme of "She Couldn't Say No" that was never realized.

The idyllic sporting life lived by the country doctor is exploited in interesting ways, especially when trying to hook the big fish in the creek. It blends well with the romantic attachment between the country physician, Dr. Robert Sellers (Mitchum), and the high society lady with a British accent,Corby Lane (Simmons). The repartee between the two is at times humorous, especially in the beginning when Dr. Sellers thinks she's a crazy patient who may have escaped from a mental ward. Digger, a forerunner of Opie, adds a little depth to Dr. Sellers' character and tends to be an asset. All in all this Howard Hughes throwaway is a good one to catch.

Jean Simmons and Robert Mitchum both lend star quality to this unassuming endeavor. It doesn't seem that they're lending it together. Mitchum was still playing characters, albeit here a country doctor, who'd have sex with anything in a skirt. Simmons seems less interested.

It's a sweet story. She seeks out a small town whose citizens had helped her when she was a sick child. Now, therein lies the single greatest flaw of this movie: Maybe the print I saw had been cut. However, exactly what this little town did to help a child of privilege is never made clear. And that kinds of eats away at the ore of the movie.

Still, her well meaning but ill thought-out good deeds make for a touching little story.

And the sequence in which people from all over the country drive up, trailers pulled behind their cars, hoping to benefit from her largess, sure is reminiscent of "Ace In The Hole"! That's an infinitely more cynical movie but these scenes have a dark quality too.

The other mystery is Simmons's clothes, especially in the first half. I am not one to pay much attention to ladies' fashions but she sure does appear to be pregnant hen she arrives in town.

She did have a baby not long after this. Maybe the movie was shot completely out of sequence; because in later scenes, she seems trim and chic. (She is chic in the maternity-style clothes, too, but they are hardly flattering to her.)

Jean Simmons is the "she" in "She Couldn't Say No," a Howard Hughes film released in 1954 but probably made earlier. Simmons stars with Robert Mitchum, Arthur Hunnicut, Edgar Buchanan, and Wallace Ford.

Simmons plays Corby Lane, who as a child developed an illness and needed an operation her father could not pay for. The small Arkansas town she lived in took up a collection to send her to St. Louis and get the surgery she needed. Now, she's an adult and is returning to the town to show her appreciation.

Her first stop is to see the doctor who diagnosed her and sent her to St. Louis, Dr. Sellers, but he's gone and has been replaced by his hunky son Dr. Sellers (Mitchum). There's an attraction, but Corby -- who hasn't given anyone her real name -- notices that the doc has a few girlfriends.

She starts her giving by sending people things that she believes they need. They don't. She actually causes more problems than she solves. Then she decides to anonymously mail money (probably $5000 which in those days was a great deal of money - heck, I'd take it now). As soon as the news gets out, people drive in from all over the country hoping to get some nice mail like that. Meanwhile, the town residents are planning to leave and seek greener pastures.

Kind of a strange movie - first of all, Jean Simmons was such a beautiful woman, yet her hair in this film is most distracting as it looks like it was cut with a weed whacker. Also the character she plays is kind of annoying. Just think - Audrey Hepburn did Roman Holiday and Sabrina while Simmons did this.

Simmons and Mitchum make a great couple with lots of chemistry, as they did in the superior Angel Face. Mitchum is very sexy and Simmons does the best job she can with the material. The supporting cast is terrific, and the surroundings do evoke a small town atmosphere.

This was Lloyd Bacon's last film, and what a comedown from 42nd Street! It's a ragged script that needed a little more development.

I've always been a big fan of Jean Simmons and felt that she indeed lost out to Audrey Hepburn once she started working in the United States. Hepburn was a warmer actress, but I think Simmons had more range. Just an opinion.

Okay if you're a Mitchum fan, as he comes off the best here.

This was the hundredth and last of Lloyd Bacon's features (in 28 years!) and it's way down from his career summit, 1934's "42nd Street".

Set in Progress, Ark. (pop. 200), "She Couldn't Say No" concerns a revenant from childhood, heiress Jean Simmons. She learns that spraying her cash around anonymously causes more chaos than gratitude; but she finds love with local doctor and sage Mitchum, watched quizzically by assorted cornpone and cracker-barrel types.

There are few intimations of modernity. TV crews cover the mob hysteria when Ms Simmons's dollar-stuffed envelopes arrive in the citizens' mailboxes. Mitchum contemplates spending his bounty on "one of those bomb shelters". By and large, though, it's timeless, escapist hick hokum. The sun shines, no-one works too hard and the only blacks are a couple of goggling delivery men.

Having deprecated Audrey Hepburn in my comment on "Breakfast at Tiffany's", let me commend Jean Simmons as a British gamine with a wider range and a lot less self-satisfaction. She was suing to get out from under Howard Hughes's bizarre sway at RKO when "She Couldn't Say No" was shot (it was backburnered, like so many Hughes projects, while the boss dithered) and within five years she would do her best work in "Elmer Gantry" and "Spartacus". As usual in Simmons's earlier American movies, the script has to account for her English voice, and there's a clumsy bit of fishing slapstick to prove she isn't a stuck-up Limey; but her spirited sparring with Doctor Robert, her coolly measured tones (no hint of screech or shout) and smouldering sexiness win through.

Mitchum, limbering up for "Night of the Hunter", is his superbly somnolent, reflective yet dynamically masculine and mature self: this quiet man could make John Wayne look noisily neurotic. The couple, who had clicked in "Angel Face", keep the mild, pleasant and not too preachy romcom fresher than most from the McCarthyised, nuke-haunted Hollywood of the early Fifties, when America needed more laughs than it got at the cinema.

SHE COULDN'T SAY NO is a fascinating entry in the canon of Robert Mitchum films; it is comedy set in a small Arkansas town in which he plays a doctor with a passion for fishing. Life proceeds in a calm unhurried manner until spoiled rich girl Korby Lane (Jean Simmons) pays an extended visit. With more money than sense, she makes every effort to make the citizens' life better by giving them presents and/or gifts of cash, as she believes she has a debt to reply to the town, for having saved her life when she was a little girl. Unfortunately she only succeeds in creating chaos. Lloyd Bacon's film (his final work in a long career) has a strong moral tone to it, suggesting quite overtly that money is the root of all evil. D. D. Beauchamp's and William Powers' screenplay has some sharp one-liners in it, allowing Mitchum to display his talent for throwaway observations (something equally evident in the interviews he gave over the years on television). The film also has some strong character-performances by Arthur Hunnicutt (as Odie, a recovering alcoholic with a penchant for non sequiturs such as "It's very Monday today, isn't it"); Wallace Ford (as a splenetic vet); and Hope Landin (as a maternal boarding-house keeper). Simmons' costumes are a continual source of attention, especially when compared with the rather dowdy attire of the citizens; it's clear she is trying her best to draw people's gazes towards her. In terms of ideology. SHE COULDN'T SAY NO is redolent of mid-Fifties attitudes towards women, suggesting that they are not "fulfilled" unless they get married and have children. Hence the ending is rather wearily predictable. But nonetheless there are some incidental pleasures along the way, not least the sequence where Mitchum brings boxes of diapers to one of his patients' houses, only to find that Korby has (anonymously) sent a huge pile already. The sight of Mitchum's face, a mixture of anger and sheer bewilderment, is a sight to behold, reminding us - if we didn't already know - of his versatility as a film actor, despite his public protestations to the contrary.